FindSampo Platform for Reporting andStudying Archaeological Finds

Using Citizen Science

Pejam Hassanzadeh1, Eero Hyvonen1,2, Esko Ikkala1, Jouni Tuominen1,2, SuzieThomas3, Anna Wessman3, and Ville Rohiola4

1 Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo), Aalto University, Finlandhttp://seco.cs.aalto.fi, firstname.lastname@aalto.fi

2 HELDIG – Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Helsinki, Finlandhttp://heldig.fi

3 University of Helsinki, Department of Cultures, Finlandsuzie.e.thomas@helsinki.fi, firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi

4 Finnish Heritage Agency, Finlandhttps://www.museovirasto.fi/en, firstname.lastname@museovirasto.fi

Abstract. This paper introduces the FindSampo Reporter and Portalplatforms for reporting and studying archaeological finds on the SemanticWeb, respectively. FindSampo brings together members of the public,scientists, cultural heritage managers, and archaeologists utilising citizenscience mediated by Linked Open Data and emerging Web developmenttechnologies. Our focus is on reporting technical results on designing theuser interfaces and on evaluating the Reporter part in a field test.

Keywords: Citizen science · Semantic Web · Archaeological finds

1 A Citizen Science Platform for Archaeological Finds

The popularity of metal detecting has grown rapidly in recent years. Many Eu-ropean countries have therefore started to develop digital reporting services tocollect, analyse, and study archaeological data: 1) Portable Antiquities Scheme(PAS)5 records6 archaeological discoveries found by members of the public inEngland and Wales since 1997 [1]; 2) Digital Metal Finds (DIME)7 is an on-line platform for reporting metal detecting finds in Denmark [10]; 3) PortableAntiquities of the Netherlands (PAN)8 is an online portal in use in the Nether-lands [9]; 4) Metal-Detected Artefacts (MEDEA)9 is an online portal developedin Flanders for metal detectors [2,10]; 5) ILPPARI10 is a portal of the Finnish

5 PAS: https://finds.org.uk/database6 1.4 million finds have been reported by more than 14,000 citizens by now.7 DIME: https://www.metaldetektorfund.dk8 PAN: https://portable-antiquities.nl9 MEDEA: https://vondsten.be

10 ILPPARI: https://www.kyppi.fi/ilppari

Heritage Agency (FHA) for reporting archaeological objects found by citizens inFinland [11].

FindSampo is a new research prototype of the SuALT project11 aiming tostudy and improve the reporting process and analysis of archaeological findsbased on collaboration of the public, academic researchers, archaeologists, andthe FHA [4,11,8]. The system includes two interlinked applications: 1) Find-Sampo Reporter, a mobile reporting system for finds, and 2) FindSampo Portalfor analysing and studying the finds collection on the Web. The intent is to usecitizen science to enable citizens to participate in archaeological research andimprove themselves in different stages of reporting, and to expedite processingof reports. Such involvement allows participants to improve themselves and alsolearn more about archaeology. In this way, archaeological data becomes morequickly and comprehensively available and accessible for research purposes andDigital Humanities [3].

This paper presents the design principles of the FindSampo Reporter andPortal user interfaces and results of a first field test for evaluating the Reporterpart with metal detectorists. In contrast to the aforementioned related works,FindSampo is based on Linked Open Data. FindSampo Portal is yet anothermember in the ”Sampo” series12 of Linked Open Data services and semanticportals [7], based on a national Semantic Web infrastructure [6].

2 User Interface Design: FindSampo Reporter and Portal

A user-centred design approach was adopted right from the beginning in thedesign process of FindSampo Reporter. Requirements were elicited at an earlystage using online surveys and interviews, and they have been evaluated contin-uously through showing and reviewing mock-up interface designs with end usersand finally in field testings [8].

Another key decision was to enforce a mobile-first strategy, which optimisesthe design firstly for mobile devices and afterwards for others. Adopting a mobile-first approach is critical because especially the archaeological find reporting func-tionalities are intended to be used in the field. On the other hand, it is morenatural to carry out tasks related to data analysis on a desktop with a largescreen, so it is important that the user interface adapts to larger screens also.Figure 1 shows how the user interface adapts to different screen sizes in order toreduce the user’s cognitive load.

11 SuALT project: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/sualt-project12 For a list of Sampo portals, see https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/applications/sampo/.

Fig. 1. FindSampo user interface on different screen sizes.

Additionally, in order to maximise the efficiency of the find reporting processfrom the citizen’s point of view, the need to enter data is minimised. The re-porting process consists of short and simple questions that express only one ideaand are easy to answer. The process is split into a series of self-contained stepsto make the report flow understandable. FindSampo Reporter provides helpduring the reporting process with the aim of making find reporting as easy aspossible. Such a process improves finders’ knowledge of archaeology and wouldalso reduce the workload of FHA’s officers as the quality of the reports improves.Figure 2 shows some example steps of the reporting process above-mentioned: ifthe user is on the find spot, the coordinate information as well as time can beread automatically from the mobile phone (image on the left); the find spot canbe seen and edited also later on (image in the middle); the depth of the find canbe set with a slider (image on the right).

The idea of minimising the reporting work of the metal detectorists wasdeemed important in order to foster reporting of finds in the first place, sinceaccording to our interviews, metal detectorists seem to like reporting tools thatwould record less information. However, from the archaeologists/heritage man-agers’ viewpoint, it is necessary to collect all relevant data about the object andits find context. So, we are facing here a somewhat challenging situation to de-velop a platform for all user groups’ needs. Our solution proposal in FindSampoReporter is that additional information can be collected from the detectorists,if needed, after they have provided the basic information of the find, and aconnection between the finder and FHA has been established.

In FindSampo we plan that all validated archaeological objects found inFinland would be openly available to the public with the exact find spots. Thiswould help metal detectorists to find promising areas for exploration. Further-

Fig. 2. Steps of the reporting process

more, opening the find data in detail, would be useful for Digital Humanitiesresearch. For this purpose, the FindSampo Reporter prototype already includesa semantic portal for searching and viewing the finds on maps, with additionallinked information from other relevant GIS services of FHA. For example, it ispossible to see on maps not only the individual finds but also protected archae-ological sites where metal detecting is forbidden by law.

However, disclosing the exact find spot data is a challenging and criticaldecision for openness still to be confirmed, as many archaeologists argue thatthere is the danger that disclosing the exact find spots would lead to looting.In many countries and systems, such as DIME in Denmark, location data isfuzzified before publishing. Furthermore, according to our interviews, the detec-torists usually would not like to disclose their find spots immediately but wantto investigate them first by themselves. The compromise solution we are aimingat the moment is to disclose the exact find spots only after a period of time, sayone year. If the find spot is deemed important, it is then also possible to add itin the list of protected areas.

The data of validated finds will be accessible via the FindSampo Portal basedon the Sampo-UI framework13 and a SPARQL14 endpoint at the Linked DataFinland platform15. The initial version of FindSampo’s public Linked OpenData database contains approximately 3600 archaeological finds, and more findswill be added as the FHA delivers new validated data.

13 Sampo-UI homepage: https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/tools/sampo-ui/14 SPARQL: https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query.15 Linked Data Finland Portal: http://www.ldf.fi

The validated finds can be studied through different views in the FindSampoPortal, based on the Sampo model [7]. This model includes three components:1) A “business model” for harmonizing, aggregating, and publishing heteroge-neous, distributed contents based on a shared ontology infrastructure. 2) Anapproach to interface design, where the data can be re-used and accessed in-dependently from multiple application perspectives, while the data resides in asingle SPARQL endpoint. 3) A two-step model for accessing and analyzing thedata where the focus of interest is first filtered out using faceted semantic search,and then visualized or analyzed by ready-to-use Digital Humanities tools of theportal.

An important part of the FindSampo Portal is the underlying ontology in-frastructure, a basis of the Sampo model. As a starting point, the MAO/TAOontology for Museum Domain and Applied Arts of the Finnish ontology infras-tructure FinnONTO [5] available today at the Finto.fi service16 is used. Thisontology is being enriched with new concepts extracted from the finds databasesand is being aligned with international ontologies, such as AAT17 and PeriodO18,as part of the ARIADNEplus project19.

In FindSampo Portal, the finds can be analysed and interpreted using facetedsearch which enables users to analyse, filter, and organise data by applying mul-tiple criteria at the same time. Thus, users can browse a large amount of databased on the specific search criteria such as object type, material, period, mu-nicipality, and province. Furthermore, users can view archaeologically significantsites with tutorials to gain knowledge about archaeology and also the rules of lawin their pastime. Figure 3 shows the different views for visualising archaeologicaldata with faceted search in FindSampo: the Clustered Map view (on the left)is used for providing the user with an aggregated view of filtered finds on themap; the HeatMap view visualizes the distribution of the filtered finds in colors;the Table view lists the finds in a traditional way; the Statistics view illustratesstatistical distributions of the finds along different facet dimensions, here basedon the material of the selected finds.

3 Implementation

In the design stage of FindSampo, a variety of Web development technologieswere analysed and as a result, the most appropriate ones selected for implement-ing it. The technologies were chosen on the basis of technical efficiency and userneeds.

FindSampo Reporter utilises the Semantic Web and emerging Web devel-opment technologies to provide a platform for reporting and studying archaeo-logical finds. It is a single-page application and therefore, it does not need page

16 http://finto.fi/maotao/en/?clang=fi17 https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/18 https://perio.do/en/19 https://ariadne-infrastructure.eu/

ClusteredMap HeatMap Table Statistics

FacetedSearchondesktopandmobilescreens

Fig. 3. Different views for visualising archaeological data with faceted search in Find-Sampo

reloading when navigating around the application. Such a structure enables usersto use it more efficiently in the places where the Internet connection is slow.

FindSampo uses a set of modern JavaScript libraries such as React20, Re-dux21, Material UI22, and Sass23 to build the client. The server is implemented

20 React: https://reactjs.org21 Redux: https://redux.js.org22 Material UI: https://material-ui.com23 Sass: https://sass-lang.com

using NodeJS24 and ExpressJS25 to enable a lightweight interaction with ex-ternal services. Semantic Web technologies, such as ontologies, are used forharmonizing data within Finnish archaeological data sources and establishinginteroperability with international archaeological resources.

4 Evaluation

To gain in-depth understanding of FindSampo Reporter from a user-centricperspective, a field testing was performed with a small number of metal detec-torists [4, Ch. 7]. After reporting the finds through FindSampo Reporter, thedetectorists filled out a user experience survey. As a result, the overall impres-sion of the prototype was very good, and all metal detectorists very likely wouldrecommend it to friends or colleagues in the future. Furthermore, the detec-torists were fairly well satisfied with the reporting system. All participants foundFindSampo more efficient, attractive, and easier to use than the FHA’s currentreporting service ILPPARI. The testers in particular liked the mobile-friendlyuser interface, efficient and effective reporting process, automatic location iden-tification, and search page for validated archaeological finds.

5 Discussion and Future Work

FindSampo takes the current state of archaeological find databases a step fur-ther by providing a mobile platform that combines the advantages of the existingones and also utilises citizen science, Semantic Web, and emerging Web develop-ment technologies. The evaluation of the prototype and user experience surveysreveal that the platform improves significantly archaeological data collection,analysis, and interpretation processes. Furthermore, it provides further researchopportunities by visualising and linking archaeological data as well as improvingits availability and accessibility.

In the future, the members of the public can hopefully participate in allstages of research and report processing using FindSampo and ILPPARI, thelegacy system of FHA for find report management. FindSampo aims at buildinga community in which everybody gains benefits, including volunteers, researchcommunities, heritage managers, and also the whole society using citizen science.Furthermore, FindSampo is going to generate data models that are semanti-cally interoperable with existing cultural heritage databases, other Europeanarchaeological resources in order to provide research opportunities by visualis-ing archaeological data as well as improving its availability and accessibility. Thedata will be part of the Pan-European ARIADNEplus infrastructure26.

Acknowledgements. This paper is an output of the research project “Su-ALT – The Finnish Archaeological Finds Recording Linked Open Database (Fi:

24 NodeJS: https://nodejs.org25 ExpressJS: https://expressjs.com26 https://ariadne-infrastructure.eu

Suomen arkeologisten loytojen linkitetty tietokanta)”, which is a consortiumproject funded by the Academy of Finland, decision numbers 310854, 310859,and 310860, based at the University of Helsinki, Aalto University, and theFinnish Heritage Agency. Thanks to CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland,for computational resources.

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